Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 34-04, Section: A, page: 1887. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1973.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-02, Section: A, page: 0545. Adviser: Carolyn Calloway-Thomas. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 13, 2007)."

<p>The anthology of the elder Seneca (c. 55 BC - c. 39 AD) contains quotations from approximately 120 speakers who flourished during the early Empire. The predominant tendency in modern scholarship has been to marginalize these speakers and the practice they represent (declamation): they are regarded as a linguistic and literary monolith, and their literary productions while recognized as influential are treated as discrete from those of other, "serious" authors. The present dissertation challenges this viewpoint by focusing on the following questions: To what extent can a speaker quoted in Seneca's anthology be said to have a distinct and unique literary identity? What is the relationship of a speaker, as represented by his quotations, relative to canonical texts? </p><p>Since most of the quoted speakers are found exclusively in the anthology, the study first examines the nature of Seneca's work and, more specifically, how the quotations of the anthology are organized. It is discovered that the sequence in which excerpts appear in a quotation do not follow a consistent, meaningful pattern, such as the order in which they might have occurred in a speech. Instead, excerpts exhibit a strong lateral organization: excerpts from one speaker show a close engagement with excerpts in spatially distant quotations from other speakers. A fundamental organizing principle consists in the convergence of excerpts around a limited number of specific points for each declamatory theme.</p><p>The remainder, and bulk, of the dissertation is a close analysis of the quotations of two speakers: Arellius Fuscus and Papirius Fabianus. The distinct identities of these speakers emerge from comparisons of excerpts in their quotations with the often studiedly similar excerpts from other speakers and from passages in other texts. Fabianus' literary identity takes shape in a language designed to construct the persona of a philosopher-preacher. The identity of Fuscus resides in idiosyncratic sentence architecture, in a preference for Presentational sentences, and in methodically innovative diction. Further substantiating Fuscus' identity is evidence that he assimilated the language of authors, such as Cicero and Vergil, and established compositional patterns that became authoritative for later authors, such as Ovid, the younger Seneca, and Lucan.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2009. / Adviser: Edward E. Lotto.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Language Education, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb 4, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-04, Section: A, page: 1205. Adviser: Faridah Pawan.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Wadda Ríos-Font. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-184).

<p> This study examines the ways in which Mexican literary elites, or <i> literatos,</i> sought to engage new readers and expand the reach of their literary practice in the 1920s. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the efforts of Manuel Maples Arce (1898&ndash;1981) and Germ&aacute;n List Arzubide (1898&ndash;1998) to publicize the vanguard aesthetic movement known as <i> Estridentismo</i> between 1921 and 1927. During the 1920s, as Mexicans reconstructed a nation that had been torn asunder by the violence and upheaval of the Mexican revolution (1910&ndash;1920), Maples Arce and List Arzubide sought to expand the relevance of their literary efforts to communities that included more than just other literary elites. </p><p> In seeking to resonate with broader reading publics, the <i>Estridentistas </i> turned to manifestos, illustrated magazines, books, and literary journals&mdash;the genres of literary publicity available to <i>literatos </i> at the time. I understand the discursive products of these engagements as <i>Estridentismo</i>'s "public faces," a term I use to analyze the ways in which Maples Arce and List Arzubide engaged with social expectations about who <i>literatos</i> were or why they mattered. </p><p> The first half of this study focuses on Maples Arce's time in Mexico City from 1921 to 1925. By analyzing <i>Estridentismo</i>'s founding manifesto and Maples Arce's regular appearances in the magazine <i>El Universal Ilustrado,</i> I show the difficult and limited ways in which <i> Estridentista</i> social engagement emerged. The second half centers on List Arzubide's reenvisioning of <i>Estridentismo</i>'s social mission after leaders of the movement relocated to the provincial capital of Xalapa in 1926. In this second phase of the movement, List Arzubide made addressing nonelites a fundamental part of <i>Estridentista</i> literary practice and, in many ways, drastically altered the public faces of <i>Estridentismo.</i> </p><p> I argue that despite these important differences, Maples Arce and List Arzubide were both committed to socializing their aesthetic practice and resonating with new readers at a moment in which few <i>literatos</i> explicitly addressed anyone but other <i>literatos.</i> By focusing on the development of the public faces of <i>Estridentismo,</i> this dissertation shows how a small group of iconoclastic poets helped to reimagine literary practice by publicizing their aesthetic rebellion to a nation emerging from civil war.</p>

This dissertation offers a comprehensive rhetorical analysis and theoretical critique of Advanced Placement English. AP English is identified and explored throughout as a site that instantiates most of the controversies that have arisen over the past several generations regarding rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of English. Chapter 1 focuses on the AP English Language and AP English Literature exams to probe the tensions between expanded notions of writing and reading processes against the demands of large-scale testing. It is argued that the exams valorize a problematic formalist approach to literary texts and undercut and attenuate the writing process. Some of the exams' flaws are considered as a means of demonstrating ways their validity can be challenged. In Chapter 2 the College Board's two AP English course descriptions are examined in detail. While explicitly acknowledging contemporary theoretical reconsiderations for the teaching of English, each course's "explicit curriculum" is subverted by an "implicit curriculum" rooted in New Criticism and current-traditional rhetoric that are fostered by the demands of the AP exams. In Chapter 3 the development of the AP Program is situated within its earliest historical, political, and ideological contexts by linking it to the values and methodologies of the first College Board entrance exams of the early 1900s, key aspects of which were later resurrected in the AP Program. The historical consideration continues in Chapter 4 through an analysis of the specific impetuses that created the AP program in the 1950s. Particular attention is paid to the often confused and contrary relationship between high school and college English as well as the often unstable and undefined position of the first-year college English course. Chapter 5 concludes with a personal explanation and interpretation of what it means to teach AP and its version of college English.

I am interested in locating assumptions about democracy and logos in the Greek democratic city-state which have been carried over into the modern, democratic national-state. The assumptions, I argue, offer insights into the hegemonic view among rhetoricians that antagonistic rhetoric is inappropriate in our contemporary democracies. In Chapters One and Two, I analyze the development of democracy in Ancient Greece in order to uncover the assumptions upon which that system was based. I argue that these assumptions are dominated by what I call "the ideology of sovereign right." In Chapter Three, I illustrate how this ideology has been carried over into contemporary treatments of democratic argumentation that have had influence in the field of rhetoric and composition. I argue that the Western tradition has privileged and continues to privilege the Aristotelian logic of non-contradiction, and thus, has left no legitimate place for antagonistic rhetoric. In Chapter Four, I return to ancient Greece to investigate the struggle over the construction of the rational that took shape in pre-Socratic philosophy. I argue that prior to the Socratics, another treatment of rationality developed, one based on the logic of contradiction, which provides a place in rhetoric for antagonism. In Chapter Five, I argue that dialectical materialism, as opposed to Aristotelian dialectics and post-structuralist notions of rationality, challenges the ideology of sovereign right embedded in democratic systems. In the Epilogue, I comment on the significance of this argument for the field of Rhetoric and Composition.

This dissertation investigates the rhetorical practices of a tradition: the Reform Movement in Judaism. I analyze the three platforms written in 1885, 1937, and 1999 to define the collective identity of the Reform Movement in America. I begin this study by concentrating on how the Reform Movement framed its collective identity in each of its platforms focusing on what this group agreed on and disagreed on and how they represented those disagreements. Through my investigation, I discovered that these documents reflected different stages in the tradition's development. In this dissertation, I argue that how the Reform tradition framed its collective identity depended on the tradition's stage of development. I argue that in the tradition's first stage of development, it questioned the external, broader tradition from which it diverged, yet it did not question its own internal beliefs, texts, and authorities, and it projected an authoritative identity uncomplicated by disagreements. For example, in 1885 the rabbis authoritatively declared that traditional Jewish practices were no longer meaningful in the modern era. As the tradition developed, the community no longer deferred to internal authorities unquestioningly, but became self reflective and asked questions about itself---questions that enabled the community to understand the lessons from its history and identify inadequacies. So in 1937, the rabbis stated that some of these practices were worthwhile, can be revised to be more meaningful, and can help keep Jews connected as a collective---as a people. Then, in 1999, the tradition faced an epistemological crisis because conflicts over rival answers to key questions could no longer be settled rationally. The problem was that the movement could not resolve the apparent contradiction of having a belief system that valued individual differences and being able to define itself as a collective. It was through the writing process of the 1999 platform that the movement articulated the tradition's most significant beliefs and solved its epistemological crisis by defining reform not by the contents of its changes but in the very process of change---the belief in the value of change and diversity.